Unintended Consequences of Medical Advancements

Antibiotics, anesthesia, vaccines, genetic recombination tools are some of discoveries that have undoubtedly revolutionized the field of biomedicine. The beneficial results of these discoveries are obvious, and many million lives have been saved. The harms or side effects are often ignored or are dismissed as collateral damage. For example, overdose from anesthesia, incorrect medication, drug-drug interactions etc. also kill thousands of people, and often blamed on human error. In fact, medical “mistakes” is the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer. Even books have been written on this topic- “Your Health Care May Kill You: Medical Errors”. A large number of errors remain unreported, but despite increase in incidence, corrective measures taken by the hospitals and medical institutions remains unchanged.

Overuse and over prescription of antibiotics has caused new health problems and resulted in emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Many pathogens, such as viruses, bacteria, and fungi evolve rapidly, especially in response to evolutionary pressures that include interventions, such as antibiotics and vaccines. Human coronaviruses have been around for centuries, but until recently, until the appearance of SARS-CoV-2, there were no reports of coronavirus mutating so frequently. Emergence of over a dozen mutations resulting in several distinct strains in just the last 3 years since the start of COVID-19 pandemic have been reported for SARS-CoV-2. One would expect that the host’s defense mechanisms aka the…